id Software is considering a return to the QUAKE series, John Carmack tells Eurogamer, though while id's technical director says "strong factions" within the company are in favor of this, he also notes this is speculative as they continue work on RAGE and DOOM 4, saying: "Nothing is scheduled here, people are not building this." His comments indicate that if this comes to pass, their leaning is towards a reboot of the Cthulhu-style mash-up of the first game, rather than the Strogg-oriented sequels. "We went from the Quake 2 and the Quake 4 Strogg universe. We are at least tossing around the possibilities of going back to the bizarre, mixed up Cthulhu-ish Quake 1 world and rebooting that direction," he tells them. "We think that would be a more interesting direction than doing more Strogg stuff after Quake 4. We certainly have strong factions internally that want to go do this."

I agree on plot and coherence, but no atmosphere? I strongly disagree.

You're 100% correct, I misspoke and should have clarified. What I meant goes back to coherence - the atmosphere was just one of dread. Nothing specific to Quake. It was there, which made the game fun, but it wasn't distinct to Quake.

Part of it came from the darkness, part from the sound, and part from the emptiness. Quake was a very empty game, as were most from back then. You'd have eerie times of walking through a part of a level you cleared trying to figure out where to go next. No enemies to fight, as you'd killed them, but the knowledge that one may be around the next corner if you missed him the first time through, or in a closet (haha Doom 3), etc. It'd just be silence then (if I remember, which unfortunately was a step back from the distant roars of Pinkie in Doom.)